North America

The Jewish community of Petaluma is best described as a group of Socialists who raised chicken. In the local Jewish cemetery, a mid 19th century tombstone reads, "He Believed in Justice". This was probably true for most of the early Jewish settlers who came to Petaluma from Russia and Eastern Europe with a highly educated and often professional past. They chose chicken farming due to their beliefs in the virtues of physical labor and thus created a truly unique community in rural America.

The Jews in American Alaska, 1867-1880Rudolf Glanz
1953
46 p. 23 cm.

The story of the first Jewish pioneers in Alaska is accompanied by a careful analysis of the historic and economic conditions surrounding the purchase of Alaska by the United States. Most of the Jewish settlers were attracted to the new territories by the opportunities for fur trading that was already a booming business in San Francisco. Nevertheless, there were also Jewish storekeepers, postmasters, butchers, saloonkeepers, tobacconists, trading posts managers and even a few miners. In response to the general concern for the dangerous influence of the "straight drink" upon the native population, Benjamin Levy opened Alaska's first brewery in 1868.

Excluded from the privilege of farming in Europe, Jews were among the first groups to establish agricultural settlements in western Canada during the19th century. Around 50 Jewish families from Southern Russia, including the famous Bronfman family, founded the Wapella settlement in Saskatchewan between 1886 and 1907. These settlements gradually declined mostly as a result of severe environmental and economic factors.